When The World Falls Apart
by Raivis-Latvijas
Summary: It felt like I was waking from a nightmare every time my slumber ended, but I only woke up to the nightmare around me. I could remember the bombs and the fire and the chaos all around me. Some had said the world would end in fire, but I had hoped it wouldn't be in my lifetime. Post-Apocalyptic AU. Possible pairings in future chapters.
1. A New Lifestyle

My breath hitched in my throat as I gasped for air in the dust around me. Asthma. The bane of my current existence. It felt like I was waking from a nightmare every time my slumber ended, but I only woke up to the nightmare around me. I could remember the bombs and the fire and the chaos all around me. Some had said the world would end in fire, but I had hoped it wouldn't be in my lifetime.

My name was, and still is, Matthew. Just Matthew. I prefer not to think of my last name. It reminds me of the family I no longer have.

The world was torn to shreds in what was a short-lived Third World War. Everyone was fighting, civilians were dying, and soldiers didn't know what to do with orders as clear as a brick wall. Their own governments betrayed them. Launched nuclear bombs hoping to decimate the enemy, but the enemy retaliated with their own. It was an all-out "blow the other guy to bits until he can't enter launch codes anymore" kind of fight. Some people had survived, or at least, I hoped so. I hadn't seen anyone, heard anyone, or recognized any signs that anyone had even passed through the area I was in. New York had been absolutely decimated. I had only been here on a business trip; I was a representative for a company than now had no meaning. Nothing had meaning anymore, except for non-perishable food, clean water, and shelter.

I'd been traveling on foot for a while. About a month now, since everything had gone to Hell. I had a messenger bag and a backpack with me. I slept where I felt it was safe, tucked away in a sleeping bag I'd scavenged. I usually lay in the subway system, on the ground where you'd have seen performers playing drums or singing or beggars kneeling, asking for spare change.

I sat up from the tiled floor I'd slept on, sliding my sleeping bag off of me as I struggled to catch my breath. I'd had asthma for a long time; ever since I was a kid. It was really bad now, with everything so polluted and covered in rubble and dust. I'd emptied my inhaler a week ago. I was trying to find a hospital, but I didn't know my way around New York very well. I was from Toronto in Canada, for crying out loud.

I sat there gasping for what felt like an eternity, before I slowly regained my ability to breathe properly, tears flooding my eyes. I hated waking up every morning like this, choking and gasping. Asthma attacks were more of a danger to me than starvation or radiation. I found it funny. Only survivor to be seen in N.Y.C. struggling not with scavenging for food or water, but with his own body due to an illness he'd always had. If anyone could have seen me, I'm sure they would laugh.

I stood up and brushed myself off. I was wearing the same tattered clothes I'd been wearing when the bombs dropped. Glasses, a pair of khaki pants, a red sweater vest, what used to be a white button up that was now stained black and gray from ash, and a pair of dress shoes. Most nerdy-looking apocalypse survivor ever, if you asked me. Among my belongings in my bags were survival necessities. Twelve cans of food that I rationed to one can a day, and bottled water that I had filtered with a t-shirt I had been wearing beneath my button up and boiled. I also had three lighters, around fifteen packs of matches, and two knives in case one broke or became too dull to use. I had raided a convenient store a few days after I'd gotten my bearings of what had happened to the world around me, and had taken everything I could carry that would be of use to me. The two bags were among the items.

I grabbed my messenger bag and slung it over my head, resting the strap on my shoulder, then grabbed my backpack and draped it over my back. I rolled up my sleeping bag and shoved it inside my messenger bag, clipping it shut with a heavy sigh. My body ached. I was filthy. I don't know what hope I had or what kept me moving on. Maybe it was the idea that somewhere, there was someone else still alive.

I took a deep breath and began walking, heading up the stairs of the subways entrance and going out into the faded morning light. The clouds in the sky were some natural, some from fires that still burned in what remained of the skyscrapers. They weren't skyscrapers anymore; that was for sure.

I walked in the middle of the street, glancing around at the empty taxis and civilian vehicles that had no use now. Expensive cars that had been so coveted only a month ago, now rendered worthless. Billboards and advertisements and all sorts of propaganda and preaching, now meaningless. Every last thing; meaningless.

I'd come to terms with the fact that I'd probably wind up dead out here in the wasteland of New York. With the hours and hours of aimless walking, there was a lot of time to think, and lot of things to accept, and a lot of regrets to forget, and a lot of dead people to forgive. If only I'd forgiven them sooner, I told myself, maybe I wouldn't be thinking of the regrets I had for not doing so. Instead I could think of what a wonderful person I had been before everything had ended, but in all reality, I'd been a wallflower for a lot of my life. I'd been kicked around a lot as a teen. Bullied. Berated. I figured it was best to just distance myself. Shy away from it all. Become invisible. I never forgave those bullies for what they did to me; I never knew why they did. Perhaps the reason they beat me was because they suffered abuse by the hands of someone else? Perhaps they shunned me for being gay, because they themselves were too scared to come out? Whatever the reasons, it didn't matter now.

I didn't have many friends in my life. Didn't care to make them. Didn't want to, and now, I was somewhat happy for it. I didn't have anyone to miss. Didn't have any memories to reminisce on and kill my mood. Not that I had much of a mood anymore. Just a vacant stare ahead, and maybe a tinge of sadness when I thought of my family. I tried not to think of them. Tried not to remember them, because they were the only people I had. They were the only ones. When I was bullied I would run to my father, Francis, or to my step-brother, Alfred, or to my step-father Arthur. I knew they were dead. There was no way they'd survived. I knew California had been hit hard; that's where they had lived at the time, in a lovely place in San Francisco. Probably not so lovely anymore.

Thinking of them was the only thing that made me sad. I'd gotten used to seeing the devastation all around me. I'd seen bodies of people before. I wasn't scared of a thing. But when I thought of them, sorrow took a hold of me. I cried every time and wouldn't stop until it was getting too hard to breath and my eyes burned.

I thought to myself, maybe I could get to California somehow. Get on the outskirts of the city where the streets weren't clogged with cars, hijack whatever vehicle I can, and just drive and try to find my way from the East Coast to the West Coast. It was just a far-fetched musing. There was no way I'd be able to make it or find my way there. I had no clue how to get around the United States. I hardly knew how to get around Toronto.

I wandered aimlessly for a few hours through the city before coming across a sight that somewhat surprised me. It was the fuselage of a plane, lying on the ground, mostly intact minus a giant hole in the side that was likely from a missile. I thought to myself what it must have been like to have your last moments plummeting from the sky, then shook my head. Out of curiosity, I approached the hole in the side and peeked in, glancing around. The scent of decaying bodies hit me hard before I even had a chance to see what was inside and I flinched, backing up and away from the fuselage quickly. I should have guessed there would be a lot of bodies there.

I turned and made my way around one end of the plane remnant, not daring to glance to the side to see what lay inside the cylinder of decay. I continued on my not-so-merry way.

I found my way to a highway, and stopped. Did I want to leave Manhattan and journey on to somewhere else? I stood, pondering. If I followed the highway, it would take me to New Jersey, and perhaps, to survivors. I know New Jersey was hit as well, but not as hard as New York. Maybe there was a chance I would find someone, and that alone, made my decision for me. There was a sort of loneliness that clawed at my heart, and I hope so badly to find someone, anyone.

I ran a hand through my messy blonde hair and adjusted my glasses before continuing on, down the path on the high way. The cars on the highway were piled bumper to bumper, so I began to walk on top of them and climb. It was fun, I supposed, to do something you could have never done before. After about a half hour's walk, before me stood the George Washington Bridge. I walked onto the upper level so I could get a view from the highest point. I walked atop the cars until I reached the center, where a semi-truck was conveniently placed. I climbed up on its trailer and stoop, glancing around. The Hudson River lay still, with unmanned boats drifting along its waters. From up here, you could really see the destruction that had become of two the most recognizable cities in the USA. New Jersey was practically level to the ground, while New York only had a few tall buildings remaining.

Deciding to take a break and enjoy a peaceful moment in the calamity that surrounded me, I sat down and took off my bags, retrieving a bottle of water and one of my cans of food. It was some type of generic brand soup, but I was fine with it. Cold soup tasted amazing after walking nonstop for hours. I used one of my knives to open the can of soup, drinking the broth and then bending the carved out lid into a sort of scoop to get the noodles and whatnot out. I sat and ate and drank my water, the only man who would likely ever see such a sight as this. It was somehow serene despite the smoke billowing from collapsed skyscrapers and the death all around me. If this had been a month ago and I were telling people that I'd be sitting atop a semi's trailer, eating soup, watching New Jersey and New York burn in unison, I would have been called crazy.

But for now, crazy was a lifestyle, and I'd live it for as long as I could. It wasn't so bad after you accepted that this destruction was all there was left.

Once you understand that the world isn't going to change back, and there's no place that wasn't destroyed in the bombing, it changes from survival to living. Just not the kind of living we'd all been used to.


	2. Ashes

**A/N: I wrote this rather quickly after work. I apologize if it seems rushed!**

**xxxxxx**

I had barely heard the air raid sirens of the base in the calamity all around us. We were shoving ourselves into chemical gear and gasmasks, and shoving our way towards the underground bunkers. All of them had filled by the time we'd reached them. I went to the safest place I knew; the basement storage area of the barracks. I held tight to the ones I loved and apologized over and over that I couldn't have done more. I tried my hardest to get my father and step-father to safety. I'd tried so fucking hard, but I wasn't a superhero, no matter how hard I tried to be.

My father was Arthur Kirkland. Still alive, but only a hollow shell of the man he'd once been. The moment his husband, my step-father Francis Bonnefoy fell ill was the moment everything went dark. He had no hope, and I was to blame. If only I'd been quicker. If only I'd been less selfish. If only I'd have given up my life for their safety.

I sat with them in the wreckage of a military barracks. As far as I knew, I'd been the only soldier to survive. Other civilians had left the tattered base to seek out refuge elsewhere in California. Somewhere safer than this irradiated wasteland. I sighed through the confines of my gas mask. I was wearing chemical gear, as issued to every soldier. I'd been able to retrieve mine from my locker with no trouble. I'd found only one other spare in the scrambling for equipment prior to the bombing, and Francis had forced it onto my dad, instead of himself.

My name was, and still is, Alfred Jones. Specialist Jones, for those who knew me as a soldier. I had been a part of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment. We knew we were at war, but we had no idea the bombing capabilities of our enemies. California, as far as I knew, had been ripped to shreds. The largest cities had been decimated, including the one I was currently in; San Francisco. I was lucky, during my service, to be stationed in Camp Parks. I would have been out of there only a day after the bombing, had they not happened. My unit was preparing to deploy to Europe and assist our troops, but we were caught off guard, and thus, defeated. My dad and Francis had only been there to see me of to combat; not live it themselves. Now we all sat against a wall in the wreckage that they had never seen coming.

Francis, since he hadn't put on a chemical suit, had been inflicted with radiation sickness. He was slowly dying, slowly suffering, and no matter how many times he muttered to me how it wasn't my fault I still blamed myself.

The reason we hadn't left with the other civilians was because Francis was far too incapacitated to go anywhere. My dad refused to leave him until his time had come. I went out and scavenged every day for food that was safe to eat, and water that was safe to drink. Every time I returned, Francis still had his head in my dad's lap, blood dripping from his mouth, tears in his blood-shot eyes, and his thin hand in Arthur's own gloved one.

I didn't know what day it was, or what time it was, or what we were going to do once Francis passed. As sad as it was for him to by dying right before my eyes as the days passed, I had to think of where to go from here. This base was a radiated mess. We had no choice but to leave if we wanted to survive.

I placed a hand on my dad's shoulder and he glanced to me. "Do you remember when Francis and I got married, Alfred…?" He asked, his voice thick with a British accent and worry. He'd been born in London, which we could only assume had been destroyed as well. He'd come to the US with his first wife, whom he had me with. I'd taken her surname instead of his; an unusual thing for parents to do, but it was my name and I kept it. Once my mother and father divorced, he found solace in a French coworker, who he later befriended, dated, and got married to when I was eight years old. I didn't really understand what bisexuality was or why my mother was no longer in the picture, but all I'd known at the time was that I had a really quiet and shy step-brother named Matthew Williams, and now my dad was happy with another person, who just happened to be a guy. My life was pretty good up until this war. I was happy. My dad and step-dad were happy. Pretty sure Matthew was happy with whatever he was doing.

When I turned eighteen, I enlisted in the Army. My dad and step-father were fully supportive, and were extremely proud of me for my decisions. My step-brother moved back to Toronto where he was born from Francis' first wife, and from there, I never really kept in contact. I had too much going on. I went through my training and was proficient in everything I did. I'd been deployed once before to the Middle-East for a peace-keeping operation, but it was a short deployment. I didn't really do much of anything. I got a small bit of combat experience, and received my Combat Infantry Badge from it. When I returned home, I was stationed while the unit underwent maintenance and was reorganized. I relaxed for a year on that base before the shitstorm that caused all of these bombings began. I was now twenty-two, and stuck in a nuclear wasteland.

"Yeah, I remember… At least somewhat… It was a great time. I don't think I'd ever seen you so happy." I responded to my parent. Francis let out a quiet and weak laugh.

"… H-He was so handsome…" He muttered.

Arthur chuckled very slightly. "… So I'm not handsome anymore?" He joked, though with a heart heavy enough to weigh down a plane on a runway.

"You always have been handsome and are still today even if I… even if I cannot see your face through your mask… a-and you always will be the most wonderful man I ever m-met, Arthur…" Francis' bloodied lips curled up faintly at the edges. "… I-I love you… I love you so much…"

"I love you too, Francis…" Arthur gently stroked Francis' cheek with his free hand, comforting him as much as he could. He and I both knew Francis was in pain but the stubborn Frenchman refused to show it beyond the visible symptoms. His skin was dotted with a purplish-red rash that I'd learned was called purpura thanks to the training I'd been through. It was caused by the radiation; something happening to the blood vessels. I wasn't too sure. I tried not to think about it too much. As morbid and sorrowful as it was, I wanted Francis to just die already. I hated to watch my father's beloved suffer. I hated to watch one of the men who had loved me like his own son despite not actually being related to me, just… suffer. That's all we were watching was his death, and it was so agonizingly slow. It had been a few weeks, at least. We knew we had to be getting close to the end of his life.

"I'm going to go see what I can find to eat…" I stated as I stood from the floor. Arthur nodded his head slightly, his eyes fixed on the dying man whose head rested in his lap. Many times before I'd seem them like this, watching movies or relaxing. Just never in these conditions. Never like this.

I walked off, stepping over rubble and debris, watching my surroundings carefully. This wasn't the kind of area you'd want to trip and fall. Sharp stones would tear open your chemical suit and leak the poison in the air into your body. Everything was gray with ash that had rained from the sky like toxic snow after the bombs had hit. I couldn't tell you how many explosions I had heard.

I eventually came to what used to be the nearest mess hall. There were no distinguishable roads on the ground anymore, so I had to guess based on the rubble what buildings they had once been. It made me gad I had walked around base so much and seen inside so many of the structures.

I shifted rubble around in the mess hall and after digging for what felt like hours, I salvaged a few cans that had somehow survived, likely tucked away in the back of a freezer in a basement. I wiped away some of the dust on the dented cans and attempted to read what was left of the labels to identify what they were, and found them to be cans of corn. I didn't find any sort of expiration date, nor did I find any openings in the cans that would have spoiled them.

My dad and I didn't eat with Francis, when we ate. Where Francis was, was far too radiated for us to take off our suits and still want to live for a long while. We left the building and went to a nearby bunker to eat, and as soon as we were done, we geared back up and returned to Francis.

I made my way back to the dilapidated barracks, and when I arrived, my heart sank. Arthur was sobbing through his gas mask, clinging tightly to the limp body of Francis. I shoved the cans I'd found in my pockets and rushed over, pulling my right glove tight to my fingers and pressing them to Francis' neck.

It had happened; there was no pulse. He had died.

I reached and wrapped my arms around Arthur, hugging him tight. He gripped my suit tightly and cried out in sorrow. I began to cry as well, not daring to glance to limp body of my stepfather that lay next to my dad.

"His suffering is over, dad… He's in a much better place now… He's not in pain anymore…" I repeated such phrases to try to calm my father but he was inconsolable for quite an amount of time. Once he'd finally regained the ability to do something other than cry, he let go of me and turned to Francis. I stood and walked a few feet away, giving him a private moment to say his goodbyes to his lover. Once I heard his feet shuffling as he stood and walked to me, I turned around and sighed shakily.

"I'll carry him outside… We'll bury him..." I said. My dad nodded his head and went out to the ash and rubble. He waited for me while I carried Francis out of the barracks. I moved some large pieces of rubble to use the crater they'd created in the ground as a grave, then set Francis in. I took smaller pieces of rubble and rocks and whatever dirt there was around to bury him, and then moved one of the larger pieces of rubble to the top of the grave to mark it. My father could only stare in sadness.

"I… I knew this was coming… but somehow… I still can't believe he's gone… I still can't believe that my Francis… i-is dead…" He uttered, voice cracked with emotion from the heavy loss.

"I can't believe it either, dad…" I murmured.

"Like you said earlier though… He's out of his suffering… He told me before he died that he loved me, over and over again… He knew he couldn't stay any longer… He knew he was going to die within the few minutes he had started talking to me… I… wish I could have gone with him… but he told me that he wanted me to live… He wanted me to continue on… and I'll follow those words. It's what he wanted… and as we always did, what he wanted was what I wanted; what I wanted was what he wanted…"

"We need to get off of this base… Find a car or something… Find somewhere less radiated."

"Agreed…" My father sighed heavily. "No use in waiting around any longer… Let's go, Alfred."


End file.
